NEW DELHI: The Congress has given a clean chit to party lawmaker Alpesh Thakor who has been charged with fanning the recent violence against migrant workers from UP and Bihar in Gujarat.“Alpesh has no role. He is being blamed to target the Congress. The video is an old clip,” Gujarat Congress chief Amit Chawra told TNIE, referring to a viral video clip that shows a member of Alpesh’s Thakor Sena asking the migrant workers to leave Gujarat within 24 hours.
The issue has stirred politics in the western state, with the Congress and the ruling BJP trading charges. A day after Rahul Gandhi slammed the state government over the violence and said he was there to fight for the migrants, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani asked the Congress president to take action against Thakor first.
On his part, Thakor, Congress MLA and AICC secretary in-charge of Bihar, acknowledged that he had been advocating “local jobs for the locals”, but never supported any violence against the migrant workers.
Chawra blamed the state government’s laxity in bringing the situation under control for the fear psychosis among the migrant workers, leading to their flight.
“The incidents of violence have been just a few, but people fled due to fear,” he said. “Had the police acted in time, the situation could have been brought under control.” He alleged that the BJP let the violence spread in order to deflect attention from the failures of the Rupani government.
Taking a cue from Rahul, the state Congress unit has deployed frontal organisations like the Youth Congress, the Sewa Dal and the Mahila Congress to assure the migrants that the party stands solidly behind them.